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THE ASCENT OF TETNULD 261
that I could no longer resist the temptation to go myself and see
once more the great mountains, of many of which I had in
1868, owing to broken weather, luid but fleeting glimpses. I
felt confident—and as the event proved, rightly— that one unclouded
view would clear uj) most of the confusion that still encompassed
the nomenclature of the Central Group, and enable me to deter-
mine between the various identifications of the two summits first
measured and named by the makers of the five-verst ma]> as
Dykhtau
and Koshtantau.
In August 1887 M. de Dechy and I, with my old friend and
guide, Francois Devouassoud, and two of his relatiojis, found
ourselves at Betsho, the centre of Russian administration in
Suanetia. The condition of the snow had forced me to give up
any designs on Ushba, the Suanetian Matterhorn. The experience
of subsequent and more competent peak-hunters has since
fully proved tlie wisdom of that decision. My thoughts naturally
turned to the other great mountain which dominates the upper
basin of the Ingur, Tetnuld. The views we had already gained
had sufficed to remove all the doubts raised in the previous
year, and to establish the entirely separate existence of Dent
and Donkin's peak. We had seen the two mountains from the
west, rising at least a mile apart and separated by
glacier basin.
an immense
Shkara, Ushba, and Tetnuld, owing to their being so conspicuous
fi'om the valleys at their base, and even from the distant
lowlands, are at this moment among the best-known peaks of
the Caucasus. Twenty-five years ago they were unrecognised, and
hardly even named. Shkara, when seen from the distant lowlands,
was described as Pasis Mta, because it is not very far from
the passes at
was called the
De Saussure.
the Rion (Phasis) sources, just
— Simplon or St. Plomb—
by tlie
as Monte Leone
contemporaries of
Tetnuld and L shba preside over Suanetia, as the Jungfrau
and Wetterhorn do over the Bernese Oberland. Owing
to its
peculiarly graceful form, Tetnuld was one of the first peaks to
attract attention from Caucasian travellers. M. E. Favre speaks